Healthy living shops nutritiously

A stop at the local supermarket is not only about stocking up the grocery cart. Selecting the right food and eating healthy has taken on new importance. Healthy Living this week goes shopping for the right nutrition.

Marleni Cuellar
“Grocery shopping for most people means looking at prices: getting better value for your money. But a second priority for most people is choosing the healthier option. These days with labels like ‘fat free’ ‘low fat’ high fiber’, it’s very difficult to decipher what is the healthiest purchase.”

Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
Nutritionist, Karen Rosito advises that when shopping for food. It is very important to look at the nutrition label. Most of the foods we purchase from the supermarket are imported and due to the stringent regulations in other countries; they all carry a nutrition label. We are equipped to figure out the nutrition content of our food. But first let’s demystify the nutritional label.

Karen Rosito, Nutritionist
“Even if you have basic education; standard one, standard two and up you can read a label. It’s so easy because it’s all there. Look at your quantities of carbohydrates, proteins and the different fats. I always say know the serving size. So know if you’re can to eat the whole bag of chips or half the whole pack of cookies or half or three. The big mega pack of cookies; two little cookies you get a hundred and sixty calories but you get two grams of trans fat. So that’s nine-fifty-two, this is seven-fifty-eight. Now if you have a family of four hungry kids you’re going to buy this, you’re not going to buy chips ahoy. They are not going to eat two they’re going to eat at least four to six.”

Doubling or tripling the serving size then means that you must double or triple all the nutrition facts displayed. So instead of a hundred and sixty calories, if you eat four of these cookies you’d have consumed three hundred and twenty calories and four hundred and eighty calories if you had six.

Calories provide a measure of how much energy you get from food. Most persons tend to consume more calories than they need. As a general guide to calories based on a two thousand calorie diet, forty calories is low, one hundred calories is moderate, four hundred calories or more is high.

Karen Rosito
“The most important thing is to read the serving size. You can’t take a big old soup bowl of cereal if it provides two hundred calories because then you can literally get one thousand calories in the morning and then you’ll say I’m just eating cereal.”

But there is more to look at than just calories.

Karen Rosito
“A product that has too many grams of saturated fat, that’s the bad fat, the fat that will stick to the side of the arteries. A product that contains for example ramen noodles; every Belizean love ramen all over the world because it’s so nice but it’s addictive because it has a lot of salt. Remember when a producer puts sugars X grams. They are talking about natural sugars that’s in the carbohydrates and natural sugars that added sugars; sugars that they put in for flavor. I always tell people you buy expensive juices, apple juice cranberry juices you pay twelve to fifteen dollars but it’s really all sugar and like ten percent cranberry juice or cranberry from the berries themselves.”

Trans fat is another evil to avoid but because of the health concerns raised it is rarely found in food. But if trans fat is the evil then Fiber is your superhero. It’s found in wheat products.

Karen Rosito
“Try to include fibers; we should as human beings get twenty-five grams of fiber per day. Anna if you notice the same sixteen ounces whole wheat enriched whole wheat fettuccine versus enriched macaroni product. Product of Italy, same thing but one is brown is one is not.”

Marleni Cuellar
“But this says wheat, one hundred percent Duram wheat?”

Karen Rosito
“Not whole wheat: white flour. Remember wheat dah wheat; flour dah flour. Oats is literally oats. It’s one of the few meals that we can eat morning noon or night. You can put it in your chicken patty to make a better burger and its one of the natural ways to lower your cholesterol naturally. You’re fuller longer.”

The ingredients list is also useful to look at. They are listed in descending order starting with the ingredient used the most to the one used the least. Unfortunately, not all our local products include nutrition labels. Some products, like Marie Sharp, do. When it comes to buying an imported product without a label, Rosito’s advice is to just don’t.

Karen Rosito
“In Belize and around the world we don’t really shop for nutrition we shop because taste buds direct us to buy. We shop because Mr. Tony the tiger is on frosted flakes and he is so appealing to us. I like frosted flakes but frosted flakes no good fi we: too much sugar, too much sugar for your kids and remember if you’re shopping for your family you have to remember that they are kids and they’ll eventually have the same habits.”

So surprise yourself, Next time you’re shopping look at the label. You never know if you may put something back for a healthier option.